The Gnomon Workshop – CityEngine in VFX Shot Based Approach To High Quality Procedural Film Sets

In this seven hour lecture, Matthias Buehler discusses the creation of procedural digital film sets. He focuses on a practical approach towards efficiently translating concept art into a procedurally generated set, addressing the important topics of directability and designing the modeling procedures for a specific, shot based application. He continues with introductions to Esri CityEngine and NextLimit’s Maxwell Render. Further on, he presents an example of a near-futuristic Dubai-esque set in CityEngine, then continues to show how to create a second, similar set from scratch. Using a proposed scripted render pipeline that allows rapid design iterations, he ports all geometries to Maya to render the scene in Maxwell Render, using the automatically referenced final shaders. Finally, he steps through a custom PhotoShop action, to retouch each rendering to final quality.

Theoretic and practical approach towards creating procedural city models in Esri CityEngine
Introductions to Esri CityEngine and NextLimit’s Maxwell Render
Discourse on an efficient artwork and shot based approach towards the creation of procedural digital film sets
Discourse on a practical example digital film set, plus the creation of a similar set from scratch
Discourse on a specific, proposed render pipeline, with post work in Adobe PhotoShop